Crisis Drills And Learning The System

Tom Mueller 0:07

Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Leading in a Crisis Podcast. We're so happy to have you with us again this week. On today's episode, we have our fourth and final take on our conversation with uh James Hartsfield, the former director of communications at Nancy Johnson Space Center. On today's episode, we're going to talk to James about the role of communications in a changing media environment. We're going to talk onboarding and get his thoughts on hiring new communications staff. He's got some interesting stories to share about that. We also talk about how NASA scales up for crisis, which is one thing I've been curious about for a while because it's a challenge we all face when things go wrong. And we also touch on uh other topics, including deep fake videos. And we talk about how do you manage those in this changing media environment. So thanks for being with us. Let's rejoin the conversation with James now. Quickly, is there anything else on crisis exercises that you like to highlight? You mentioned the simulations and you know what you do. Is there any other type of exercises that you do?

James Hartsfield 1:20

I mean, on practice, I'll say it and there's separate things, right? Is the and I don't know how to equate these to everyone else's situation outside of NASA because NASA's so unique on a lot of things. Spaceflight, obviously, there's there's that's one of the most amazing things about working there, right? Is the uniqueness. But but um there's the practice of learning crisis communications in mission control, doing the commentary, as we talked about, the voice of mission control, um, and learning how to do that. And and you know, you here's a little story I'll tell you is that when I did get hired, you know, they called me Jack Riley, the Apollo, a voice of Apollo, called me back to, and I got hired and I went in, and it's a thing that happens. You come in and they said, We're hiring you, but it's gonna be two months before you can start because the budget comes in then or something. So I had two months before that and I made the mistake of saying, Well, hey, is there anything I can do to help get ready to hit the ground running? And they handed me an 800-page book on the space shuttle systems and said, Yes, you could read this and learn it.

Tom Mueller 2:26

Wow.

James Hartsfield 2:27

And I said, Wow, and I I did though. I over the next two months I took it down and I sat on the beach a lot reading that 800-page book, which was a real Bible about the shuttle and its systems. But that's just in a nutshell to illustrate that there's that one part of the crisis communications is learning whether it's your plant or your refinery or whatever, whatever it is, how does it operate? What does it create? How does it work? Where are the points that that are issues and not issues, you know, where uh what happens when these things break? Because in a real-time situation, you're not always gonna be able to go ask what that is. Now, in practice situations, you can. There's a practice, then afterward you can have a debrief, and and you can have your own debrief where you go find the right technical expert and and find out all about that, right? And learning. Um, but you're not gonna always have that in a real-time situation. So learning that, that's that's what the console part was. The second part is really that having leadership side by side with you, really devoted to participating in that exercise and finding somebody, because it might not be you that wants to do it. Uh the sim soups were good for it, right? Because they were supposed to do that. That was their job. But somebody who can tell leadership that if they screw up in that practice simulation, that you know, leadership, you screwed up. That's not a good thing to do, you know. Might have to draw short straws to figure out who's gonna do that, right? But uh maybe an outside person to come do that is good, right? But but um, but they need to have it that objectivity. You have to be able to tell them that. They leaders don't want to, they they I think by and large, they understand that this is not their expert area and they want to work with it, but um but you need that and you need to build that strength of relationship. And I think the practice sessions do that on those two levels, right? Because one, if you are on that first level where you understand the equipment and the processes and the technical areas, if you understand them enough, you know, you're never gonna be an engineer, you just profess to be a technical expert. That's not your field, but you understand them enough, it gains you respect with the other leadership, right, that is in the technical area, that you have done your homework to learn it, right? And that's exactly the way it is at NASA. You get more respect because you do understand some of these systems, you know.

Tom Mueller 4:49

Yeah. And it makes you a better commentator and PAO because you can talk coherently about what's happening.

James Hartsfield 4:56

Absolutely. And and I will tell you too, I think NASA, I've always had the opinion that NASA, because we operate on the edge of technology and the edge of achievement, if we can just get the public to accurately understand what we're doing and accurately understand what has caused a problem, um, then they'll give us the empathy required, uh the leeway, you know, the bandwidth, because uh lots of times space is just not easy to explain, you know. And I is that what I'll go back to with Columbia is the the lightweight foam, marshmallow weight foam, uh, a 10-foot section. But once it came loose from that large orange external tank, it was only a hundred so feet, a couple of hundred feet above the wing, the leading edge wing, but it came loose and the shuttle is accelerating so fast, you know, it goes from zero to 17 times the speed of a rifle bullet in eight minutes. It's accelerating so fast during that time frame that the foam came loose, the shuttle is accelerating, the foam is decelerating immensely because of the air resistance that it's hitting. It's a low density foam. The shuttle wing is accelerating. So by the time it hits the wing, there's a difference in velocity of a thousand miles an hour or so. And so this marshmallow weight piece of foam is now a bowling ball going at a high velocity, hitting this reinforced carbon-carbon. Hindsight, you know, the kinetic energy issue there, it's easy to see. And and that's uh, you know, that's the damage that was easy to see. But but uh I will go into hindsight. I'm gonna say my one thing about hindsight because it's a favorite of mine, is hindsight is a wonderful, wonderful teaching tool, wonderful educational opportunity. It's a horrible yardstick. You should never, if you're gonna measure the performance of people who are doing things in real time because of your hindsight, your measurements are usually gonna be wrong. It's not uh not usually accurate.

Tom Mueller 6:53

Yeah.

Explaining Complex Failure With Empathy

James Hartsfield 6:54

You know, for one thing, I would say this a lot is that um the ways to deliver communications have changed, but the things that people are interested in don't change, you know? And that's mainly other people, in my opinion. Most mostly people are interested in other people. That's that's really what they're mostly interested in. Even if you're going to space, you can fly an uncrewed spacecraft and there'll be some level of interest. But when you fly people around the moon, whole different story, you know. And uh and uh they you can tell them about the systems on the spacecraft and the technology and all this stuff, but really seeing that person have to eat in space is gonna be more interesting to them than anything else, you know. So people are the I'll go back to our newspaper days, Tom. Is uh I've always carried this with me because a certain editor that we both had, I told him, you know, I had photography, I've worked on photography, but I'm not the best photographer. And he said, it's okay. You know, what you really need to remember when you're gonna shoot a picture, try to make sure that you have the person's face. If it's gonna go in the paper, their face is at least as big as a quarter. It's big enough that they can see the expressions and what's on the person's face because that's all anybody wants to see mostly in the picture is the faces. And and I'm using that as an analogy to a bigger thing. That's what they really are interested in is people, you know, all the time, right? Right. I don't know if you got that same lecture, right?

Tom Mueller 8:18

But uh it was I mean, it's the human impacts on things, right? And that's what one of the definitions of a crisis is that it affects people, and that's where the empathy is so important that you recognize you've had an effect on people, acknowledge that, now tell them what you're doing about it, right? And be as transparent as you can. I think that's terrific advice.

James Hartsfield 8:42

And the other thing I'll say about social media and media in general, right, that has changed and and uh I lament someone is that that NASA, in the first uh, you know, when I was there early in the career and and moving on, and and I think it may be coming back to this with Artemis. I think it's that that may start shifting things. But uh we had a dedicated number of media um from major outlets, wire services, newspapers, uh networks that only focused on space. They had a reporter assigned to cover space, and so that reporter learned. They had they they they read that 800-page shuttle book. Maybe they didn't go that far, but they that they learned a lot about the system. So they were inevitably way more accurate in their reporting. So when a mainstream media, general media that didn't always cover us, came in and did one thing that sensationalized it but wasn't accurate, their stories would outweigh that with the accurate version. And and they were always a good outlet for us to go to to make sure the accuracy was coming. That disappeared, you know. And there's very yeah, as I think it's not a stretch to say there's very little standard that the media holds these days for accuracy or objectivity, you know. They found ways that uh they can make more money by being subjective than rather than objective. And so that's that's push pushing them. And that's true in social media, that's true in print, broadcast, wherever. So that that to me, even more so than social media, that's the bigger change you have to deal with. You have to figure out how to deal with that. The best way to deal with that is just to stick to your guns and report the accurate measures. You can go try to fight a brush fire and correct them, but uh, you know, the saying is that you don't you don't want to fight a person who has an endless supply of ink, right? You know, because uh they'll they'll win in the end, they can keep going. So try to find people that will put out the accurate stories, stick to your guns, keep putting out the right stories, you know. I think that's the best defense.

Tom Mueller 10:49

Yeah, the and I agree with that completely. But you well, you got to have a machine ready to crank that information out, right, and get it to the right reporters. And the social media aspects today just create so much chaos around communications, you know, the AI pieces, uh, how you can create a fake video, you know, just like that. Uh, and now you've got to track those down or be able to refute a fake video.

James Hartsfield 11:18

Well, I'm gonna fault the audience here, some too, right? Because the audience, uh, and I'm hoping they get smarter. I'm hoping AI will will make the eye in the audience better, you know, the intelligence of the audience a little bit better because I fault them now that you know it comes across your social media feed and it looks cool, and uh they don't bother to try to figure out whether it's real or not. They just take it and they go with it. And they don't, and and you know, a lot of them don't seek news anywhere else. They just see it on social media and they take it. And and that's a tough situation. I an audience of that type is very hard to reach. You you need to put out your own, but but you know, a lot of times, in fact, most of the time, the truth is way more boring than uh a deep fake.

Tom Mueller 12:09

Yeah, absolutely. And you've got to get your management comfortable with going out on TikTok or Instagram or you know, these places where a lot of those viewers are living today. And a lot of companies just aren't really comfortable with that.

James Hartsfield 12:25

I I would say a little of that goes to the battling the person with the endless supply ink, too. You you go fight them in their in their home territory, sometimes you still lose. I I think management also needs to get uh comfortable with uh not battening down the hatches, um, keeping putting out their material, put it out on social media, put it out on regular media, um, and uh telling your truth um and then weathering the storm, you know, because sometimes management doesn't want to weather the storm and they want to be too proactive. I I've run into that. I mean you're you seem like you're giving me a little bit different thing if they don't want to be proactive, but but there's a such thing as being too proactive, too, right? There's a there's a sweet spot in there, you know.

When Accuracy Stops Paying The Bills

Tom Mueller 13:12

Yeah, and it's you know, it's more a matter of you've got your messages, and now how are you going to deliver those messages, right? And you know, 20 years ago you'd get it to, you know, uh Miles over at CNN or whoever the space reporter was at NBC News, and you'd you'd get a good trickle-on effect from that. Um, but now uh, you know, TikTok is where most people are getting their news from. So are you comfortable creating TikTok videos in this situation? So it's just uh, you know, it's a bit of a chaotic media environment.

James Hartsfield 13:51

But here's the issue, Tom. You you create a TikTok video and it's probably not going to be as engaging as a as a lie is, you know. That's the problem. So so you don't see it if it's not engaging. But I I do think, and and uh, and what does happen, right, is there will be entities that come to you to check the veracity of things that are on social media. And and uh those might be other social media areas or this kind of thing. I I I have faith. I have faith that no matter the format of media, you know, the story is always the same. It's the ways you can tell it, the formats that are out there that allow you to tell it in social media or broadcast or print or what at multimedia now. Um, you know, they they allow you to do things with it, but but I have faith that it all circles back around. This phase we're in right now of AI, and uh it's not a phase, I think AI is here to stay, but the deep fakes and these kind of things that are happening in the way social media goes like that. I think every time one of those happens, the audience gets a little more educated, you know. They do, even the TikTok uh voracious TikTok users do, and uh that will come around and counterbalances will occur and start to happen in the media more, you know. You are a bigger issue is the lack of any desire by a lot of media to be objective, you know. I think an objective media needs to really be important, but uh but unfortunately the profit motives don't really support that, I don't think. I don't think an objective media is going to be the most profitable media these days. If you can take a side, then you're more profitable. So that's that's a bigger issue. But that also, I think over time, it just takes time for the counterbalances to start to hit, I think. And and the main counterbalance is a better educated audience. And and every every time the media goes off tangent and goes to something that leads the audience astray in the end, the audience learns.

Tom Mueller 15:52

You you give us a lot of faith, James. I'm happy to hear that.

James Hartsfield 15:56

I try to look at the bright spots on it, man. I don't know.

Tom Mueller 16:00

And I hope that's true because I just I feel like we're getting dumber and dumber as time goes by, and AI, you know, could just accelerate our you know our decline. But, you know, you have faith in human nature here, James, and that is wonderful to see, I must say, coming from the cynic that is new these days.

James Hartsfield 16:24

I found though that uh the most enjoyable thing about management to me was leading people, right? And key to that is hiring folks. And uh and you know, hiring, I don't think there's a more critical job that a leader does than hiring people for their team because a bad hire can really destroy your team, and good hires build your team. And uh you have very little information to go on to make that decision. No matter how intensive you make your hiring process, it's still the glimpse of information to make a very critical decision. Um, to me, the most important things uh about folks in hiring, I actually the most important thing for me on hiring people was their teamwork ability. Can't can they be a good team player? Because that's critical, right? A bad team player is really somebody that can hurt the team, you know. And everything at NASA, everything we did was total teamwork, right? I talk about me being on console during Columbia and me doing the talking points, but you know, I was the tip of an iceberg of people that were everywhere, right? There were uh for me being on console, there's more people that were in the newsroom and in in other centers at Kennedy doing things everywhere, um, and and working those press conferences. So everything is a huge team effort. Nothing happens without the team. If you can't be a team player, you know you're not gonna work out.

Tom Mueller 17:49

Yeah.

Deepfakes And Managing Audience Trust

Scaling Comms Teams For Big Crises

James Hartsfield 17:49

Um secondly, yes, print. I'm I'm I was biased to print. I never did broadcast until I got to NASA. Then I broadcasted for hundreds and maybe thousands of hours, right, in mission control. Um, so I became broadcasting, but uh, but I never I did print at first. And this is pretty subjective, but uh I do feel that that ability to write is a critical function um to allow you to do almost anything in communications, right? And and maybe it's not the ability to write, it's you know, for me, communications, I loved everything about it. I loved going in to interview somebody. That's the first part of writing, right? Or broadcasting or anything, right? I loved asking them the questions. Everybody every person is a story. I agree with that tenant. Um, you know, so so that passion for communications, the desire to want to tell those stories, um, and the ability to take complex subjects and boil them down to very simple terms that that uh engage people that get them to understand, that crosses all all those platforms we talk about, social media broadcast, multimedia, print, that's a basic skill for all of them. I I feel like I can judge whether someone has that skill set better from their print work than other areas. That's probably biased on my background. Um, so that's important. I I would also, though, ask more general things with them is just what why did they decide on communications, you know? Nobody ever gave me an answer that I decided to pursue communications as a career for the money. That that's that's one answer I never got. Um but uh but you know, if they have a passion for it, if they have wanted to to you know, if they were to tell me they love interviewing people, they love uh figuring out how to fill that blank page, how that's gonna that's gonna get me excited about that. A curious nature, right? Yes, yes, that and and that that they feel like communications is important, you know, and and those things. So so it's uh though those were key things, right? That passion for communications, ability to to communicate, and I judged it mostly by print is a lot of the skill sets on that. Although I've hired many broadcasters too, who are just just as skilled, and um, so I I can look at both, right? Um broadcast a little tougher to tell because they have less time to explain something. So actually it can be more skill required, I think, than print at times to do it accurately. Um and then uh teamwork, teamwork critical, you know. And and then one of the questions that I loved to ask, and and uh we would ask always is um this was a telling thing maybe on teamwork and just on a lot of things, is uh I would ask people to tell me about something they um I don't remember the exact wording of it, but we would basically ask them to tell me about something you failed at. Tell me about a bad thing that you did at work that that was a real problem and what you learned from it. And so many people are just like a deer in the headlights when you ask them that. They never wanted to say that. But you know, to me to hear somebody be forthright with that, because nobody's perfect, everybody's had something bad, you know, is a good telling of their nature and how they're gonna do.

Tom Mueller 21:10

So something I wanted to mention, James, and I'm curious about this. I haven't asked you about this before, but it's the scaling up for crisis. You know, we all most companies that I work with, you know, we've got a run level of public affairs people or communications people. When you get into a big crisis, you've got to scale up the teams a little bit. And I'm just curious, you know, from your perspective there at NASA, do you are you able to do that, you know, if you had a major incident, or do you really just push people just run a little bit faster for a little bit longer?

James Hartsfield 21:48

Well, both. The answer is both of those. Yeah. Uh I mean, NASA is a national organization, right? We have centers all around the United States, you know. Uh uh uh Florida, Texas, Washington, California, um, Alabama. So in a crisis uh like Columbia, we pulled people in from all the centers, certain people in. Now, do you pull everybody in? You know, you you you I think one thing is that uh you should know who is qualified to do what job way before crisis hits, right? Um in in leadership, even in your own team, right? You're not gonna put everybody out there in front of the media. Some people you're gonna put out there working on employee communication. Some people are going to put out there working on trying to keep the media trucks from running all over places and this kind of stuff. But some people you're gonna put out there as mouthpieces for the for the organization right in front of everyone. You don't find that you need to know who those people would be ahead of time. And it's not by asking it's just by you need to know how your employees perform right you you um NASA was big enough that we could pull people in that their managers knew they could do this job that we needed or this and they could send them to us and we would converge them in on a on a on Houston right to help. We didn't have to pull people external to the agency and I don't think we could have really in that situation right it was just too too complex and too much technological knowledge about it there. You know we didn't need to so it was good that we had that reserves to do where we can pull I think the world has gotten if anything even more that way and um and and a communications person now needs to be a jack of all trades right so I would always in hiring we talked about hiring just a minute go right is hire people who have multiple skill sets. I yeah did I like print as a major way to tell their skill set of communicating but if they were just printing that's all they could do no way right you right now you got to be able to take your phone and film something write something great about it talk about it and edit it together for me and you do all of it. So I don't have to hire any crews to do it or anything like that and and then go get you know a million likes on it. You know that's that's what I need. And um and and that's and that and that allows you great surge capacity right you can pull them over to do what you need to do at the time and I was going to say as a leader you need to know who can do what and you and that that you get on a day-to-day basis right because I would tell them when we do performance uh discussions um that um if we have a lot to say to each other if and I wanted to talk to me right anything but but if there's a lot that we say to each other I'm not doing my job because I need to know how you're working, what you're doing. I I should be talking to you constantly you know and I should be aware of your your what you're growing in and what you need growth in and and what opportunities I'm giving you know that's a hard thing as a leader too is are you giving them all the right opportunities to grow? Because usually when you're not you're doing that subconsciously you're not doing it on purpose you know in fact you have to be very deliberate to make sure you're doing that with people. But um all of those things help prepare you for the time when you're in a crisis and you have to pull the whole team out to do things. And you have to even pull other people from other centers who have hopefully managers that are looking at it that way too.

Tom Mueller 25:26

All right well James it's been a heck of a conversation here. So thank you for taking time to come out and join us here on the podcast. Uh lots of great stories there that I know our listeners are just going to love taking in. So thank you for taking time to be with us.

James Hartsfield 25:43

Well it's my pleasure Tom it's it's really good talking to you again and uh I know we'll be staying in touch but uh but uh also great to talk about NASA because this has just been a great great great time for NASA and and a great time for NASA communications I I can they uh like I said right people at the right place at the right time and I was the right place because I was a spectator and it was wonderful to watch because I wouldn't have gotten to get you know had I been working there I wouldn't have gotten to go just they didn't used it so I loved it and uh and it's go NASA.

Tom Mueller 26:14

Good to go NASA. And that's gonna do it for this episode of the Leading in a Crisis podcast. Thanks for being with us and again if you want to drop me an email that is Tom at leadingin'acris.com and we'll see you again soon for another episode. Take care